The Hubble Space Telescope, launched in April 1990, was named by NASA in honor of astronomer Dr. Edwin Powell Hubble (1889-1953). Hubble determined that galaxies (very large groups of stars and associated matter) exist outside of and are receding from the Milky Way. His work demonstrated that the universe is expanding. The Hubble Space Telescope has taken hundreds of thousands of images of astronomical objects, including the four nebulae (interstellar clouds of gas and dust) and one galaxy shown on these stamps. 

• Eagle Nebula – NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope captured the beauty of a dramatic region of star formation This stellar nursery, known as the Eagle Nebula, features pillars of dust and gas that act as cocoons for young stars.
• Ring Nebula – The Hubble Space Telescope peered at the Ring Nebula, a barrel of gas cast off by a dying star similar to our sun. The barrel, formed over thousands of years at the end of the star’s life, appears as a ring
• Lagoon Nebula – Hubble imaged an eerie cradle of star formation called the Lagoon Nebula. The giant clouds of dusty gas may have been shaped by high-speed interstellar winds created in the clouds by new stars.
• Egg Nebula – Hubble provided this view of the last gasps of the sun-like star in the Egg Nebula. The intriguing “searchlight” beams are emerging from the dying star, hidden behind the dark central dust band.
• Galaxy NGC 1316 – Hubble captured the aftermath of an ancient collision between two galaxies. The remains of the small galaxy appear as dark clumps against the glowing core of the large galaxy, known as NGC 1316.

When my father was a boy, he used to collect stamps. I remember finding his childhood stamp albums, one domestic and the other foreign. The foreign album I always found the most fascinating of the two. Each country had its own page(s). He collected stamps in the 1930s, so Germany’s stamps were all full of swastikas and because of its inflation at that time there were a lot of them. I guess it took a lot more of their stamps to mail a letter than most other countries did. My brother “inherited” those collections. This summer, while sifting through my dad’s stuff, I discovered that he had renewed his love of philately. Aided by the postal service’s desire for revenue by selling more stamps, he had collected quite a few commemorative sheets of stamps. These one-sheet collections are too pretty to use for postage, so I guess that I will just keep them.